Physics is experience, arranged in economical order. Ernst Mach More Quotes by Ernst Mach More Quotes From Ernst Mach The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless. Ernst Mach tasks perfect mean The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in intelligence. Ernst Mach uncomfortable-feeling views math When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories. Ernst Mach ties memories boys Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find it worth his while to enter into serious investigations of opinions so advanced is a question which his reason and instinct alone can decide. If these things, in the end, should turn out to be true, I shall not be ashamed of being the last to believe them. Ernst Mach support science believe I once knew an otherwise excellent teacher who compelled his students to perform all their demonstrations with incorrect figures, on the theory that it was the logical connection of the concepts, not the figure, that was essential. Ernst Mach essentials teacher science Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological adaptation to immediate circumstances. Ernst Mach circles math life Without renouncing the support of physics, it is possible for the physiology of the senses, not only to pursue its own course of development, but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance. Ernst Mach support powerful development Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses. Ernst Mach arriving use mean All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations. Ernst Mach consideration essence students Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the 'elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all 'bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes (sensation-complexes). Ernst Mach elements doe reality The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race. Ernst Mach acquisition race doe The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it. Ernst Mach abandon tasks purpose Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations. Ernst Mach medicine pain philosophy Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again. Ernst Mach light doubt men A movement that we will to execute is never more than a represented movement, and appears in a different domain from that of the executed movement, which always takes place when the image is vivid enough. Ernst Mach vivid movement different It would not become physical science to see in its self created, changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena... The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena. Ernst Mach self science reality The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life. Ernst Mach struggle average men Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting. Ernst Mach problem math may In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted. Ernst Mach important law reality Thought experiment is in any case a necessary precondition for physical experiment. Every experimenter and inventor must have the planned arrangement in his head before translating it into fact. Ernst Mach cases science facts
